All I wanted was to separate myself from my summoners. When I joined the guild, I learned that all summoned heroes are registered, along with their reported systems. Naturally, I was labeled a tracker but had the freedom to choose my own jobs. I avoided tracking contracts for this very reason. And the first one I took got me killed. Pathetic. But it wasn't over—not by a long shot.
In the darkness of my new goblin vessel, my system spoke in a cybernetic accent:
[Hard System Reset. Vessel Transfer. Body Assimilation….100%... 'God of Adventure System' initiating. Kane Forrest, welcome back. Your body was snatched by a Goblin Soul Master. Would you like to continue as a Level 4 Cave Goblin?]
Life and death are wild as hell. I started as a seventeen-year-old boy from Houston, Texas, in the United States of America. My life wasn't the easiest, and though the choices I made provided me a comfortable life, they ultimately got me killed.
Not surprising, really. Live by the sword, die by the sword. I died without resentment, and even then, I was given another shot at life. I then reincarnated as a student in an international high school located in the New Imperial Republic of Japan on an alternative Earth. Everything I thought I knew no longer mattered. So, in this new life, I worked ten times harder, partied a hundred times heavier, and fought a thousandfold stronger. My first life was a blessing I squandered. The second was a surprise.
Things were going well for me, but then, I was summoned to another world along with my classmates during a class trip to Sri Lanka. Yes, it gets wilder. Not only are there parallel dimensions, but there's—wait, I'm jumping ahead. Let's rewind.
My class was part of an internship program for young archaeologists. Our task was to assist scientists in exploring a resurfaced ruin, theorized to be part of the lost continent of Lemuria. I had no idea what any of this meant for my future, let alone what Lemuria was. So, like anyone with half a brain, I went to the internet. After two seconds of reading, I was hooked.
The internet read: "Lemuria was a continent proposed in 1864 by zoologist Philip Sclater, theorized to have sunk beneath the Indian Ocean. Later appropriated by occultists in supposed accounts of human origins."
This was like hunting for Atlantis, which I believed in at this point because why not—this was my second life on a parallel Earth.
During the mission, Yuri Markov slipped.
One misstep on ancient stone was all it took. I heard the sickening crunch before I saw the way his body hit—limbs at wrong angles, skull fractured like shattered porcelain. His blood fanned out in thick ribbons, soaking into the dust-laced glyphs beneath us. The floor drank it greedily.
Then came the hum.
Low at first. Then louder. Resonant. The ruin trembled, as if exhaling after centuries of silence. Symbols along the walls ignited in dull, pulsing red. And then—light. White-hot. All-consuming. No time to speak. No time to scream. Just an explosion of radiance that seared through flesh and thought.
And then... stillness.
We stood in a hall that defied comprehension.
The Nexus Royal Palace—though we didn't know its name then—rose around us like the dream of a mad god. Towering obsidian columns stretched into a ceiling lost to shadow, each carved with ever-shifting runes that whispered just beyond understanding. The floor beneath our feet gleamed like polished onyx, inlaid with constellations of gold and silver, as if the very stars had been buried in the stone.
Firelight flickered in floating braziers that never touched the ground. The flames burned blue, casting long, unnatural shadows across the banquet tables—immense slabs of blackglass ringed with empty thrones. At the far end of the hall, a throne of jagged crystal sat upon a dais of bone-white marble, humming with dormant power.
At that moment, I thought, "Just kill me now—or at least give me a joint."
How we were summoned—my classmates and I—is a tale frayed with contradictions and gaps no one's been able to stitch closed. Ask five of us, and you'll get five different versions, all smudged by panic, light, and blood.
Truth is, I barely understood it myself.
One moment we were in the ruins, surrounded by crumbling machines and exhausted scientists scribbling notes in the half-light. The next—just silence, then heat. The kind that crackles behind your eyes. Then a pull, as if our bones had been threaded through a needle. Light poured through us. Screamed through us. The scientists didn't make it—disintegrated in an instant, their bodies torn to ash before our eyes.
We survived because we were young. Still within the threshold.
When the pain ended, and the world righted itself, we stood in the heart of a new realm: Astoria, a continent adrift in the Cosmic Sea—a place where the air itself shimmered with arcane pressure and kingdoms stretched like living myths across the horizon. Magic lived in the stone. Swords carried names and wills. Even the trees whispered secrets.
Astoria welcomed us with open arms and gilded chains.
My classmates bowed quickly. The Nexus royals, veiled in silk and smoke, offered titles, riches, and the promise of becoming "Heroes." They called it a divine summoning. A sacred bond. Most of the others accepted it like it was fate, swearing allegiance with wide eyes and trembling hands. Perhaps they were dazzled. Or maybe they were just afraid of what came next.
I wasn't. Or at least, I pretended not to be.
They called it a gift—this System they gave us. A living mechanism woven into the soul, allowing us to rise above the native-born like demigods-in-waiting. Strength. Speed. Magic. Knowledge. All there for the taking.
But no one told us the rules.
If someone knew how your system worked—knew its essence—they could unravel it. Counter it. Reduce your strength to nothing more than smoke in the wind. That was the part they didn't understand. The others flaunted their powers like children with stolen blades. I kept mine buried, layered in silence and lies.
Let them play at being heroes.
I would survive.
I, being raised in the slums of my previous life, knew the value of secrets and deception. I laid low, gave minimal effort, and took on tasks that paid out no rewards. After a year of meaningless training, I was kicked out of the Nexus Kingdom because they believed I had a Tier 1 system, the 'Tracker System.' I then joined the Adventurer's Guild in the Kingdom of the Moon—the enemy of our summoners.
I quickly rose through the ranks, gathering specialists I could trust to produce quality products, fellow adventurers who made great party members, and even managed to bed the occasional beauty. On a calm spring day, with the leaves and grass painting the wind in vibrant colors, I returned from a monster-hunting contract to collect my reward. The local Guild Master personally handed me a contract to track a group of villagers kidnapped by goblins.
I immediately found the contract suspicious. First off, goblins kidnap women. If men are also kidnapped, it means the goblins belong to a clan, not a nomadic party. Nomad parties are usually all-male, as males are the dominant sex in the goblin race. Female goblins typically only appear in clan-sized hordes. Clans are large enough to have a balanced male-to-female ratio, but they rarely last due to infighting. For a clan to last, they must have a terrifying leader. Then again, most of the world's races just kill goblins and never bother studying their culture.
Second, there were no reported deaths or goblin attacks in the area. Either the clan had just formed or had been quiet for a long time. Regardless, I couldn't refuse the contract. The reward was too tempting, and I needed to break into the Iron rank before the Dragon Hunt in a year. My greed was also too great.
After accepting the contract, I investigated the village and tracked the captives to a small cave of goblins. My suspicions were confirmed: this was neither a clan nor a nomadic group.
When I arrived, I saw humans dissected and strapped to the middle of magic circles. I didn't care what had happened—I just started killing, hoping to save whoever I could. But I never expected a high-level shaman who was also a Soul Master to be there.
In Astoria, Soul Masters are equivalent to Necromancers. Same function, but extremely rare, as cultivating a Soul Master requires a lot of life-and-death adventures and resources even a kingdom wouldn't put out. I assumed this goblin was a natural talent. Before I knew it, I was surrounded by both dead and living goblins. I was overrun and found myself trapped in a magic circle with the villagers. Unlike them, I didn't cry out or struggle. Having faced death before, I knew such things were useless.
The circle shined brightly as my soul was ripped from my body and placed in a low-level cave goblin. The Soul Master then took my body for himself. How messed up is that? Why didn't I just pretend to be something else? Who knew that a tracking job would lead to goblin body-snatchers?
All I wanted was to separate myself from my summoners. When I joined the guild, I learned that all summoned heroes are registered, along with their reported systems. Naturally, I was labeled a tracker but had the freedom to choose my own jobs. I avoided tracking contracts for this very reason. And the first one I took got me killed. Pathetic. But it wasn't over—not by a long shot.
In the darkness of my new goblin vessel, my system spoke in a cybernetic accent:
[Hard System Reset. Vessel Transfer. Body Assimilation….100%... 'God of Adventure System' initiating. Kane Forrest, welcome back. Your body was snatched by a Goblin Soul Master. Would you like to continue as a Level 4 Cave Goblin?]
"Yes," I replied. "Hell yes!"
I understood my system down to its bones.
It didn't matter what flesh I wore—human, beast, or goblin. As long as the core remained intact, I was never simple prey. My system was my soul's anchor, my weapon, my truth.
They called it the God of Adventure—a Tier 10 system, skirting the edge of legend. If I'd stayed in the Nexus Kingdom, they would've begged me to swear the royal oath. I'd have walked at the king's side, a peer to his five generals—each of them Level 100 titans, monsters draped in gold and blessed blood.
But fate had other ideas.
In Astoria, only the summoned bear systems. Our compensation, they said. A gift for the theft of our lives. For ripping us from home and memory. Systems were ranked from Tier 1 to Tier 10. Above that? Deity Class. Rare. Forbidden. Untouched by mortal hands.
Mine was nearly there.
And now, crammed into the ragged shell of a Cave Goblin, I felt something unexpected—freedom.
No oaths. No expectations. No leash.
I could crawl through the underworld unnoticed. Grow in the rot. Fester in the dark. And when I rose, I'd be unrecognizable—a god in goblin skin.
Then came the ping.
[Beginner Quest: 'Fake Death']
Objective: Erase all evidence of today's events.
Reward: Fresh start, survival bonus, Starter Pack.
"Lame," I muttered, eyeing the modest reward with a grimace. "But I'll take it."
I turned my gaze toward the celebration—the guttural cheers of goblins echoing off stone. They danced around in stolen corpses, their crude magic animating dead villagers like meat puppets. At the center, the shaman crooned over my old body, still unaware.
Let them have their moment.
They'd made a fatal mistake—assuming this vessel was unmarked.
Fools.
I'd spent years molding that body, shaping it to the peak state of Bronze rank, mastering every contour of spirit and flesh. Did they really think I wouldn't soul-mark my vessel? That I'd leave it unguarded?
Goblins may have stolen the shell, but they didn't own it. Soul Markers weren't decorations—they were safeguards. As long as my soul lingered, I held dominion. This new body was mine. And the old one?
A weapon.
I brought my hands together.
Seal. Break. Banish.
Three hand signs—my own creation. More than magic. A code. A signature.
The stolen corpse ignited from within, a sudden burst of white fire that roared into crimson. The possessed villagers barely had time to scream before they were swallowed by the detonation. The blast howled through the cave like the wail of a dying god.
Stone cracked. Dust flooded the chamber. Ceiling supports gave way in a cascade of falling rock. The exit vanished behind a wall of debris, silencing the world.
And in that smothering dark, I stood alone once more—reborn, unknown, unbound.